Redmond, Washington — Software monopolist Microsoft is not one to be left too far behind, responding to the online coupon frenzy on Thursday, unleashed Bing Deals, a clearinghouse of sorts for all of the deals that hundreds of deals sites offer on a daily basis, both on its desktop and mobile versions that gives thousands of unique offers spanning 14,000 cities and towns in the U.S.
Being a search engine, the new “Deals” division aggregates offers from top providers, including Groupon, Living Social and Restaurant.com. To comb through the loads of daily deal offerings. Microsoft has forged an alliance with deal aggregator website The Dealmap, which allows Bing to serve up links to 200,000 coupons and offers from businesses in 14,000 U.S. Cities.
However, what does this implies, basically, is that some of the individual deals extended by Groupon, LivingSocial, Restaurant.com and others have become commoditized, with the ability to seek out the best deal for a given restaurant or location, regardless of which site offers them.
“Bing’s campaign is to help you cut through the clutter of the Web to make decisions more quickly — whether that is through our own innovations or by teaming up with industry experts,” Andy Chu, director of Product Management for Bing Mobile, said in a blog post.
Our goal is to make it easier for Bing users “to unearth, share and search for the best deals in your area — all from under one roof,” wrote Chu. “The Dealmap is a leading source for people to find and share the best local deals, so naturally it made sense for us to team up with them to bring you the best experience.”
The Bing Deals list can be accessed via m.bing.com or via the Web — provides the deals inside two contexts, either by proximity to the user on the go or merely as a list of the most lucrative deals for a given area.
“The value is that we are combining these for you, bringing these all together so that you do not have to go to all of these other places,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said.
“With just one click, you will see the top daily deals featuring the very best offers in your metro area,” says Bing. “And by top deals we are talking generally 30%-50% off! These are deals you definitely do not want to miss so we made a special tab so checking is easy.”
“The DealExchange is the most comprehensive platform for sourcing, distributing and monetizing local deals,” said Chandu Thota, co-founder of The Deal Map. “Working with a technology leader like Microsoft bolsters our leadership position and highlights a period of explosive growth for The Dealmap. “We look forward to continuing to collaborate with Microsoft in ways that will deliver value to consumers and continue to rapidly grow our business.”
Online coupon sites have emerged in a big way in the past year, led by Groupon, a daily deals website founded in late 2008 that recently closed a funding round worth almost US$1 billion after turning down a reported $6 billion acquisition offer from Google.
Yahoo and Google are developing their own services for deals and coupons. Either way, this could be a huge feature for Bing. Bluntly put, this could be a reason to use Bing Mobile, especially.